I built a life where I don't need anyone. And I'm standing here choosing you anyway with both feet on the ground because after everything, after I saved myself exactly like you said, you're still the man I want on my refrigerator. And Nathan laughed, this broken, overwhelmed, disbelieving laugh, and there were tears on his face, too, now. And he said, "That's Lily made you a drawing weeks ago. It's on the fridge.
It's three people. I didn't tell her what it meant. I didn't know if three people," Victoria repeated, and something broke open in her face. Joy and grief and disbelief all at once. She drew three people, a big one, a medium one, and a little one in the middle, holding both their hands under a rainbow.
Nathan wiped his face with the back of his hand, not caring anymore. She's been asking about you everyday. When's your friend coming back? Is she still sad? I told her getting happy is slower than getting sad.
And she made you a drawing of the three of us and told me to keep it safe till you came back. His voice broke completely. It's been on the fridge for 6 weeks, Victoria, waiting for you. There was already a place for you on the refrigerator. There's been a place for weeks, and that was the thing that undid her.
Not the money, not the vindication, not the fortress or the empire, or beating Adrien into the ground. A 7-year-old's crayon drawing of three people held safe under a magnet for 6 weeks in a two-bedroom in Queens because a little girl had decided there was a place for her before she'd even earned it. Victoria Harrington, the woman who never cried, who'd forgotten how to trust, who'd built a fortress out of fear and called it an empire, put her face against Nathan Walker's chest in the corner of the 14th floor conference room, and cried like something that had been locked for 20 years had finally finally come open. And Nathan wrapped his arms around her, careful and sure the way he did everything, and held on. "There's a place for you," he said quietly into her hair.
"There's been a place. You just had to come and take it. "I'm taking it," she said, muffled against his shirt, laughing and crying at once. "I'm taking it. Tell her I'm taking it.
You can tell her yourself. " He pulled back just enough to look at her. "Come to dinner tonight. It's spaghetti night, which means it's a disaster. There's sauce on the ceiling by the end. She's a menace with a fork.
Come be a menace with a fork at my table. " "Yes," Victoria said without a half second's hesitation. This woman who'd spent her whole life managing every gap out of her calendar. Yes, God. Yes. What can I bring?
I'll bring I don't know what you bring to spaghetti night. I've never been invited to a spaghetti night. What do people bring? Just you, Nathan said. That's the only thing anybody's been waiting for.